Ivy Esquero

Tumblr user Lorenzo was trying to be an awesome big brother when he introduced his six-year-old little sister to the classic video game characters that star in the Super Smash Bros. video game franchise, and then he asked her if she remembered their names.

She got some of the names right, and came close with others like Pakistan (Pac-Man) and Bowler (Bowser), but the ones she tried to make up on the spot are pretty adorable.

To be fair, most of the characters in the game are from well before her time, and she probably hasn't been playing video games for long, but her imaginative new names might be just what these characters need to revitalize their image.

-Via Nerd Approved

L’artiste Crystal Morey imagine des sculptures en céramique étranges et fascinantes. Se basant sur différentes représentations d’humains affublés d’éléments du monde animalier, ces créations ressemblant à des totems nous plongent dans un monde à part. Plus dans la suite.

Fishfinger has completed their trilogy of art posts about the HBO series Game of Thrones. This one illustrates the various deaths on the show through the first four seasons. Actually, just the most important character deaths, because all of them would take up too much space! Since that concept contains massive spoilers, you’ll have to continue reading to see it. 

Now you can go back and see the first two parts of the trilogy, the Game of Thrones Season Chronology and the Games of Thrones Interactive Character Map, as well as the full-size Game of Thrones Death Illustrations.

With great deliciousness comes great responsibility. Fortunately, Dácil is up to the task. She made these strawberry treats by painting lines with white and dark chocolate. 

-via That's Nerdalicious!

Le collectif d’architectes Modular Beat a imaginé à Bochum cette structure sous forme de tour appelée One Man Sauna. Cette création propose ainsi sur 7,5 mètres de hauteur 3 étages, permettant d’évoluer d’une piscine à un sauna pour ensuite profiter de la vue depuis un espace de rélaxation.

L’architecte Alberto Campo Baeza vient de rénover cette ancienne usine de pêche à Cádiz pour en faire une incroyable résidence. La piscine placée sur le toit de la maison offre une vue imprenable sur l’océan. L’architecte a créé un contraste harmonieux avec l’architecture moderne et contemporaine face à la nature.

"It was the late 90’s. The police commissioner had figured out that all the people committing small crimes were the same people committing big crimes, so the cops started cracking down on all the little stuff— and crime kept going down, down, down. Everything except bank robberies. Because all the big national banks were moving into the city, and buying out all the local banks. And these new corporate banks were all about ‘customer service.’ So they replaced the retired cops at the doors with ‘greeters’ who would give you coffee and donuts. So word got around fast that robbing banks was fucking easy now. All you had to do was walk in, hand them a note, and they’d hand over the cash. I never even carried a gun. The security footage was so grainy back then, you could barely see anything. It was easy. It’s much tougher these days. I’ve had dye packs explode on me three times. The worst was about a block from here. I had just left a bank, and was walking by the entrance to Penn Station during morning rush hour. Suddenly a noise starts coming from my pants, and a bright neon cloud starts shooting out. Hundreds of people were staring at me. I threw the thing away from me, hopped in a cab, and went to a bar."

Subtle, it most definitley is not—which may explain why China’s Lotus Building by Melbourne architectural firm Studio 505 has us blinking in disbelief. This flowery suite of concert halls and meeting rooms rises, fittingly enough, from a man-made lake in the center of Wujin—a district in the southern city of Changzhou—as the uncontested epicenter of an ambitious urban project aimed at turning Wujin into a glittering cultural destination.

To that end, Studio 505 has done its gaudy best by creating a startling structure, impressive as a technological feat (that’s a lotus, alright) and for its unabashed embrace of architecture as kitsch. According to Studio 505, the Lotus Building was “conceived as an inhabited sculptural form, emerging naturally from the lake,” its multicolored painted steel petals “creating a bright and uplifting interior atmosphere, no matter the weather.” Like the lake itself, there’s nothing natural about the Lotus Building, of course, but, like children in Disney World, visitors to Wujin will undoubtedly go slack-jawed with wonder.

Images: Studio 505

What appears to be the turducken of hot dogs — a foot-long frank stuffed in a brat wrapped in bacon — makes its debut at next week's All-Star Game in Minnesota, but the real technological advancement here seems to be Draftserv, a pay-by-the-ounce self-serve beer machine. Drinkers brandish ID up front and buy a preloaded $10, $20, or $50 card, then go scan it at the beer machine, which has Bud and Bud Light, at 38 cents an ounce, and Shock Top Lemon Shandy and Goose Island 312 Urban Pale Ale for 40 per. If fans only "want half of a cup," the concessionaire explains, "that's all they will pay for." The machine will also cut you off, too, however, if you try to surpass its built-in 48-ounces-every-15-minutes limit. [ESPN]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: beer me, all-star game, baseball, draftserv, minnesota twins, mlb, news you can booze, target field

If Indian architecture conjures up images of Islamic archways and mosaic ornamentation, French photographer Vincent Leroux’s images from the southern Indian region of Tiruvannamalai will come as an unexpected treat. There, Leroux happened upon houses composed of geometric volumes and vivid color that bear a startling resemblance to the work of the Memphis Group, the post-modern design movement founded by Italian architect Ettore Sotsass.

These highly unusual houses, some dating back to the 1930′s, are, it turns out, personal expressions of the families who inhabit them, rather than esthetic statements by local architects—and it’s assumed that Sotsass, who had visited India many times, drew inspiration from Tiruvannamalai’s distinctive architectural vernacular in creating Memphis. “It is clear that in every place I visited, there were people who saw the houses with great admiration….I regularly listen to the Indian voice…. we should experience this determination without logic when we design.”

Images: AD France

Grub Street is shutting things down to get an early start on the three-day holiday weekend and hit up the corner store for bootleg sparklers. By now you should be a third of the way through the Underground Gourmet's master list of 21 outdoor dining spots — new this week: floating oyster bar Grand Banks — and don't forget to save room for their megalithic 101 Best New Cheap Eats list. The glut of holiday deals around town includes patriotic lobster rolls and St. Louis spare ribs, and otherwise, there's a brand-new spot that serves huge pitchers of Planter's Punch and another that serves lobsters split and baked in a wood-fired oven. You can always grill at home, too, if you're lucky enough to have one. We'll be back Monday with cold potato salad, whatever blueberry pie we can't polish off over the weekend, and, hopefully, for the à la mode side of things, some big scoops.

Read more posts by Grub Street

Filed Under: happy holiday, fourth of july

"I spent two weeks building my daughter a rocket ship out of cardboard boxes. Then when I finally finished, she started crying because it wouldn’t fly."

[All photos by Robert Sietsema]

The last tragic days of Dressler in mid-2013 have been endlessly rehashed and need not be recounted here, suffice to say original chef Polo Dobkin has been reinstalled and the interior completely revamped. While the original build-out was dark and baroque, the new space, while eerily recalling the old in its L-shaped layout, is now bright and open, done in pale earthen shades with whitewashed rusticated stone walls. Statuesque dark brown banquettes line one wall, behind which a pure light streams upward. The bar focuses on its bottles, and a loft right over the front entrance bristles with herbs, taking advantage of the restaurant's sunny southern exposure. One might be sitting in the lobby of a ranch resort somewhere outside Santa Fe. On a first visit 10 days after the official opening, the food was mainly terrific.

The herbs readily find their way onto the menu, which is divided into four divisions, excluding desserts: cured and raw seafood, snacks, apps, and entrées. As with most modern places, smaller dishes are the focus. A meal that a friend and I shared started out with a bang, with baby artichokes ($16) lightly crumbed, sautéed, and surmounted by an arugula salad slicked with a sort of homemade ranch dressing. We'd asked to have our dinner broken up into three courses, with artichokes as a prelude, and along with it came warm bread in the shape of a bialy sided with a yogurt-herb spread. The bread looked dorky, but tasted good.

Next arrived a very long octopus tentacle shaped like a fishhook on a plate puddled with basil oil, and some nice creamer potatoes, coins of crisp chorizo, and strips of mild red pepper, an app having an altogether Spanish impact. Simultaneously appeared something called "hand-rolled ravioli": a single pasta sheet folded like a napkin over some very fresh ricotta in a buttery parmesan broth, with peas and pea greens scattered across the top. Though more fazzoletti than ravioli, it was one of the most satisfying things I've eaten this year. These dishes were $19 and $14, respectively.

In a menu that clearly focuses on small and medium-size plates, why would one bother with the entrées, or order more than one? That was what we were asking ourselves as we tucked into two of the eight offered, which mainly ran to seafood and what might be termed amplified meat duos — a pork chop served with pork belly, for example, or a lamb loin with lamb rib. We were unavoidably lured by plancha marina ($30). As with the octopus this offering was in an Iberian vein, and the seafood was similarly unimpeachable: a pair of head-on shrimp leering up at you, a thumb-size baby cuttlefish or two, a scallop, a swatch of monkfish. These all rested in a dark oceanic broth of surpassing richness also flavored with chorizo, further bolstered with a creamy garlic allioli, which is how the Catalans spell aioli. What could go wrong? Well seafood should be buoyant, and the total effect of all these fried elements in an oily broth with mayo was just too much grease. Still, a promising dish if the lipids were held in check.

Our other main course, chicken with dumplings ($24), featured gnocchi-like dumplings the size of stunted penne, with maitake mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, and escarole in a pancetta-scented broth. The skin was crisp, the serving generous, the flesh tender. I had no complaint with it, though I might have relished more dumplings. Damn our carb-hating age! The entrée I most regretted not ordering was a cod filet that came with the garlicky French salt-cod puree known as brandade, in a pairing of fresh and preserved fish similar to the duos of lamb and pork.

Despite mild disappointment with the plancha marina, our meal at Meadowsweet was memorably delicious, with the free-form ravioli a favorite. There were a few service issues, which will hopefully be resolved by the time you visit. There was a delay of over 20 minutes between the time our second course was whisked away and the entrées arrived, so the kitchen output rate is uneven at this point. And, distractingly, the senior front-of-the-house staff spent an inordinate amount of time trying to level wobbly tables, crouching awkwardly in a sort of recurring comedy skit. Fix that shit before the diners arrive! Otherwise, I had a memorable meal at Meadowsweet that left me and my guest eager to return.

· All Coverage of Meadowsweet [~ENY~]
· All First Glimpse Posts by Sietsema [~ENY~]

Fransmart, the same franchise operating company behind the expansions of the Vendley brothers' Calexico and Canadian chain Big Smoke Burger, now has plans to make the Halal Guys a household name. The 24-year-old food cart, which sells near-legendary chicken and gyro rice plates to very long lines pretty much every day at its original cart is stationed in midtown, will branch out into brick-and-mortar locations built for "speed like the carts."

Fransmart chief executive Dan Rowe says he's been working on the deal for a long time, and that founders Mohamed Abouelenein, Ahmed Elsaka, and Abdelbaset Elsayed's street food concept will easily transition into a "category killer," destined to change the fast-casual restaurant business. The Halal Guys are already planning two brick-and-mortar locations in New York, at 14th Street in the East Village and another near Columbia, that are not part of chain operations. The initial Halal Guys restaurants, in the meantime, will start opening this year in "Los Angeles, along the East Coast, across Canada and in the Middle East," the Times reports, and the company plans to have 100 overall within the next five years.

The Halal Guys: Cashing In on Street Cred [NYT]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: empire building, expansions, franchises, halal guys, the chain gang, white sauce

To the legions of cooks who’ve wished to render an unsightly kitchen instantly invisible, Dutch interior architectural firm, i29, has an ingenious solution of eye-popping proportions. The concept of closing off the kitchen to the rest of the house has been taken several steps further with the design of a kitchen that disappears so seamlessly and elegantly as to virtually defy logic. The key lies in a suite of wall panels which exactingly replicate the detailed molding that defines a stately apartment in Paris, behind which reside the appliances and cooking surfaces. The exquisitely crafted panels, when closed, morph the kitchen into a bastion of minimalism while effortlessly preserving its intrinsic visual grandeur—ensuring that only the freestanding center island now remains visible through the room’s arched glass doors. Talk about an impressive disappearing act!Images: 129 Interior Architects

La marque de rasoir Schick a fait une campagne d’affiches très drôles montrant des hommes barbus venus de Nouvelle-Zélande dont la barbe est faite avec des rongeurs très poilus agrippés à leurs mentons. Des posters et des animaux rigolos à découvrir dans la galerie.

The hotel and travel reservations service Priceline has reportedly made an offer to buy OpenTable for a staggering $2.6 billion in cash. "The kind of work that we do day-to-day is very similar," Priceline CEO Darren Huston tells the paper. "It's just a different marketplace."

The online dinner reservations marketplace is ever-evolving into a crowded virtual space where people searching for a free seat in a hard-to-land dining room can get exactly that, increasingly for a fee. Some 15 million people use OpenTable to make reservations per month, and its "inventory" includes 31,000 restaurants, so the added heft of Priceline's already robust platform is expected to yield some kind of reservations juggernaut. The deal is expected to close later this year, pending approval and paperwork.

Priceline to Buy OpenTable for $2.6 Billion [WSJ]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: big deals, opentable, priceline, reservations

Ready for some trivia about The Lord of the Rings? Here’s a list that tells some of the behind-the-scenes goings-on about the three movies, plus things you may not know about Tolkien, his books, and the public’s reception of them. Have a sample:

6. Sean Connery was originally offered the role of Gandalf, but had never read the books and “didn’t understand the script.”

7. Connery was offered up to 15% of the film’s total box office receipts, which would have been about $400 million (more than any other actor has ever been paid for a single role).

33. About 18,000 costumes were created from scratch for the film’s trilogy, and between 30 and 40 of the same costume were created for each main character.

Well, those were about the movies, weren’t they? You’ll find plenty more in the list at Buzzfeed.
 

Avid gamers can become extremely jaded towards cover art full of empty promises and paid reviews, especially when they’ve played one too many games promising the moon but delivering little more than a slice of cheese, so wouldn’t it be a real hoot if game companies started telling us what we should actually expect when we play their game?

Mario Kart will test the limits of your friendships, Skyrim is full of crazy glitches, and there’s no getting the love back once you’ve played Duke Nukem Forever…these facts would have been helpful to know before we started playing these games and went through all the heartache!

These honest video game box art treatments, and many more, have made their way into a Facebook group called HonestVGBoxArt, which boasts a whopping 14,000 members and over 100 modded video game boxes for your viewing pleasure.

-Via Gamma Squad

La STAAB Residence est une maison construite par Chen + Suchart Studio en plein désert d’Arizona. Avec une structure très moderne, les architectes ont pensé à positionner judicieusement un cactus afin qu’il se reflète sur les vitres et la façade de la maison, selon la direction de la lumière du soleil.

No, fast food never looks like the ads, but YouTube short-maker Greg Benson wondered what would happen if he wore a hidden camera and asked the folks at McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King to give it their best shot fixing his "not very high, kind of flat, and not very attractive" lunchtime failures and redo them so that they resemble something "more like the picture." Benson's friendly demeanor is probably the biggest surprise here, given the grim subject material, and it's sort of astounding to see how much some of these various burgers and tacos clean up. Straight ahead, the video that's being called "the most polite prank of all time."

MediocreFilms Channel [YouTube]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: video feed, burger king, false advertising, jack in the box, mcdonald's, the chain gang, wendy's

The Bahamas, located in the northern Caribbean just to the east of Florida, serve as a world renown island destination. One of its better known islands is called Nassau and is home to amazingly clear waters, gorgeous beaches and lots of activities that cater to every type of visitor.

Some of the most noted island traits that keep visitors coming back year after year are its easily accessible international airport, the many world famous resorts, the numerous kid friendly activities that can be found at every turn, a world famous golf course designed by a world famous architecture, the many miles of clean powdery white sand and the many snorkeling, diving and shark feeding activities available.

It’s easy to fly to and from Nassau

Due to its popularity, Nassau is a frequently visited island and therefore an easy one to get to. With 7 different airlines flying in from the United States alone, visitors will find that planning a flight has never been easier with flights taking off daily from most major US cities. If you’re flying from outside the United States you’ll also find ease in your travel planning as flights to Nassau can be found from taking off from major cities in Canada, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Nassau has one international airport (NAS) and is located within close proximity to resorts, hotels, restaurants, shops and beaches.

Several world famous resorts are located on Nassau

For many visitors, Nassau is considered a dream vacation tied up with a beautiful resort ribbon. On the island you’ll find every kind of resort you could imagine, from 5 star resorts teaming with couples and families to quiet, tranquil escapes that are located just minutes away from the beach. Many of the resorts are world famous with the likes of celebrities, socialites and more regularly visiting for a few days of paradise.

The resorts themselves house many small attractions such as large swimming pools, spas, bars, restaurants, kid areas, shops and more.

Nassau is perfect for families with several kid-friendly activities

If you’re looking for a great family friendly island destination, Nassau is made for you. With so many different activities to choose from, your kids will be delighted every second of your vacation. From zoos, gardens, dolphins, pirates, slides, boating adventures, historic forts made for exploring, horseback riding and more, your children are sure to find a few activities that will have them smiling from ear to ear all located at Atlantis.

If you’re traveling with older kids, you’ll find comfort, while they find fun with one of ‘nightclubs’ or junior camps designed especially for pre-teens and teens.

Nassau is a golf lover’s paradise with a world famous course

Imagine sunny skies, clam breezes, green grass, a beautiful coastline overlooking clear blue waters and a golf club in your hand. That’s exactly what you’ll find at the local golf courses around the island. If golf is your game of choice you might just want to play a round at the Ocean Club golf course, designed by renowned architect Tom Weiskopf and listed as one of the top ten resort courses in all of North America and the Caribbean by Golf Digest Magazine.

Every year more and more people flock to the course, delighting in a game that brings colleagues, friends and family together in paradise.

On Nassau you’ll find miles and miles of white powdery sand

If you like sugar, you’ll love the white sand beaches that surround the island. With sand soft, fine and powdery, you’ll think you’re walking on miles and miles of the purest sugar found on earth. You’ll also find that once away from the resort line, solitude awaits as you watch the calm turquoise waves break against the beach. In fact, Bahamian beaches are so incredibly beautiful that Chris Hadfield, a famous Canadian astronaut, once said that the most beautiful thing to him from space where the beaches of the Bahamas.

Many movies have also been filmed along the beaches including Pirates of the Caribbean and James Bond: Casino Royale.

Nassau is home to famous snorkeling, diving and shark feeding

If you love the underwater world, you’ll love the watery adventures that await you off of Nassau’s beaches. From gliding on the surface to diving the watery depths, you’ll find something for everyone and every skill level. If you like sharks you’re in luck with shark feeding serving as one of the main water attractions in the area.

At Stuart Cove, you’ll get the chance to explore the reef while feeling calmed by the clear waters that guide you through your adventure. If you’re a newbie, not to worry as there are great dive operations that give lessons and certifications to those seeking to advance their skills.

Photos from Flickr users Ricymar, Valeria Almeida, Derek Key, Ryan Carr, Vic DeLeon, and Nassau Paradise.

The post Nassau, Bahamas: Why it might be the best Caribbean destination for you appeared first on Price of Travel.

It's only appropriate that Eleven Madison Park's Daniel Humm is responsible for the longest line in Shake Shack's ten-year history: The Madison Square Park burger hut is where Humm first started his New York cooking career (sort of). "When I met Danny Meyer for the first time, it was here in the park," Humm says of the restaurant icon, who owned Eleven Madison Park from 1998 to 2011. "We ate at Shake Shack together nine and a half years ago. That was the beginning, for me, to come to Eleven Madison and start that journey." In fact, the two places have a lot more in common than that: Shake Shack actually started as an offshoot of EMP, a connection that was just the beginning of their parallel legacies.

In 2001, when Danny Meyer and Randy Garutti launched Shake Shack as a hot-dog cart in Madison Square Park, they operated out of EMP's private dining-room kitchen just across the street. "We had lots of room to do it because we were mostly busy at dinner, so we had all morning and lunch to prep and steam these hot dogs," Meyer recalls. "We would walk them out to the park and put them in the hot-dog cart. We made lemon-verbena iced tea and beet-stained potato chips, and that was the hot-dog cart." That went on for three years: the summers of 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Meyer says that he launched the hot-dog cart primarily to attract New Yorkers to the park, but he also wanted to retain an important part of EMP's staff: "We had the best crew of coat checkers you could imagine at Eleven Madison Park," he says. "It allowed us to give them a job during the summer — usually, we wouldn't be able to hire them until September, and we did not want them to get away and go to another restaurant."

Of course, the little cart that could became the first permanent Shake Shack kiosk in 2004. With the new digs, the menu got bigger, too, as Meyer decided to "give the hot dogs some company" and add burgers and frozen custard to the menu. As Meyer worked on perfecting his burger recipe, it was actually Floyd Cardoz, the chef at Tabla (which shared a back hallway with EMP), who suggested that he use Pat LaFrieda's beef. "Pat LaFrieda's story doesn't start in 2004, but he was not a household name," Meyer says. "Now every place on earth wants Pat LaFrieda's beef for their burgers."

Meanwhile, EMP itself wasn't the icon it would eventually become yet, either. Meyer opened the restaurant as a French brasserie in 1998, but it wasn't until 2006 that he hired Humm to head up the kitchen and turn the restaurant into a fine-dining destination. And when Humm started, much of Shake Shack's production still happened in EMP's kitchen. "As a matter of fact," Meyer says, "We carved out about 25 square feet from our wine cellar, and that became Shake Shack's office." So, how did the two businesses get along? "It was a little odd in those early years," Meyer admits, "Because we were making Eleven Madison Park into an even more refined restaurant, and we'd have Shake Shack workers walk in — hot after a long day of griddling burgers — through this gorgeous dining room to get to the locker room."

Then again, sweaty burger chefs parading through the dining room wasn't the worst thing, since Shake Shack's profitability helped keep EMP afloat during the economic downturn. (In 2009, Lehman Brothers announced its bankruptcy on the same night that the restaurant hosted a thousand-dollar-a-head benefit.) As Meyer says, "There were some years that Eleven Madison Park took a big hit with the recession. We were not doing well. Without Shake Shack, I'm not sure that Eleven Madison Park would have survived."

After a glowing four-star review from the Times, the restaurant began booking up on a nightly basis, and in 2011, Humm and GM Will Guidara (who joined the restaurant in 2006 after working for Meyer at the Modern) had enough exposure to open a second restaurant, the NoMad, a few blocks away. The catch, famously, was that they didn't want to leave EMP, and Meyer wouldn't be involved in the NoMad, so Humm and Guidara — with the help of a billionaire banker-investor — purchased the restaurant from Meyer.

"Once we emerged from the recession and Eleven Madison Park was doing great, we ... what do you say ... divided the two businesses," Meyer (who very rarely is at a loss for words) explains. "When Shake Shack was born, the business was owned by Eleven Madison Park. Since we were doing all the work there, we just gave it to [EMP's] investors. And then we separated the two businesses so that Shake Shack was no longer helping to subsidize Eleven Madison Park. It got to stand on its own, and it was healthy for both businesses."

"Healthy" is an understatement: Shake Shack is a full-blown empire with 46 locations around the world, and Humm and Guidara continued to refine EMP to the point where it ranks among the world's most elite restaurants.

Meyer says of the sale: "It was very bittersweet at the beginning, in the same way that it was bittersweet when my oldest daughter went off to college. But to see someone become independent and grow on their own is very rewarding. I have so many amazing alumni, but I don't know that I've met too many chefs who are more gifted than Daniel Humm." It turns out that Humm can even make a mean burger of his own, and last week's record-breaking line was like a little reunion for the two empires. As Meyer puts it, "We are joined at the hip."

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: empire building, daniel humm, danny meyer, eleven madison park, interviews, new york, randy garutti, shackiversary, shake shack, the nomad

Attempting to make Google Glass cool may or may not be a worthwhile endeavor, but kudos to Google for giving it a few serious tries. Its latest attempt at giving the device fashion cache rests on the shoulders of legendary fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, who has lent her famous DVF logo to a range of new Google Glass models being made available to consumers on June 23rd.

The DVF Made for Glass collection is comprised of five new frames and eight ‘chic’ shades which, Google hopes, will help imbue the headsets with individual style and personal expression. Whether or not the collaboration with Google pays off, the 68 year-old von Furstenberg, who, in a recent interview, quipped “I’m old enough to have danced at Studio 54 and young enough not to have missed the digital revolution,” clearly means to make good on her claim.

Images: Google Glass